ROVworld Subsea Information

Seebyte's mine neutralisation program extended

SeeByte, a cutting edge software solutions company, has been awarded a $1Million contract extension through the United States Office of Naval Research (ONR), within its on-going Very Shallow Water (VSW) Mine Neutralisation (MN) programme of work. The extension follows on from discussions with project teams and user feedback from operators involved with the successful ONR project.

In the first phase of the existing programme, SeeByte was successful in demonstrating Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) and sonar servoing. The ATR was used to detect, track and classify bottom and floating targets observed using a BlueView Technologies imaging sonar. The sonar servoing was used to autonomously manoeuvre a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and; using Through The Sensor Technologies, home the vehicle to a buoyant target in the water column.

The extension to the current MN work will focus on producing an 'operator in the loop' solution to the Mine Neutralisation problem where SeeByte's sensor processing and control capabilities will be merged with SeeTrack Topside and the iRobot Maritime systems (formerly Nekton Research) Transphibian vehicle. SeeByte will use SeeTrack Military to monitor and visualise the vehicle's progress and will provide an intuitive operator interface which will enable the user to control the vehicle using high level commands.

SeeTrack Military is a mission planning, monitoring, post processing and sensor fusion tool for rapid on-site analysis and intelligent decision making. Sensors include: sidescan sonar, imaging sonar, bathymetric, and video. It is a highly modular, equipment-agnostic system and is designed to perform on both notebook and desktop environments. The software is operationally used by the US Navy and provides the graphical interface for the US Navy's Common Operator Interface Navy - EOD (COIN).

SeeTrack Military Product Manager Alastair Cormack said: "We're very excited to be involved in this program of work in which the project teams are taking the experience & technology developed offshore and using it in military applications and vice versa. SeeByte is proud to continue supporting this work, towards the global safety objective across both sectors to ‘keep the man out of the water in dangerous situations."